Dr. Włodzimierz Lewoniewski and Izabela Czumałowska from Poznań University of Economics and Business (PUEB) have reached the final of the sixth edition of the Pyrkon Scientific Zone speaker competition. Their proposed talk explores how knowledge graphs can be used to discover and analyze connections within fictional worlds. Winning the competition would give them the opportunity to present their work at Pyrkon 2027, one of Europe’s largest fantasy and science fiction festivals.
How can we organize information about complex fictional universes and uncover connections between their elements? Knowledge graphs offer a way to address this challenge by representing relationships between characters, locations, events, and other elements of fictional worlds.
The proposed talk will demonstrate how Wikipedia and Wikidata can be used to build such graphs, combine information from different sources, and identify missing or inconsistent data. Analyzing these relationships can help reveal the structure of fictional universes, uncover less obvious connections, and assess the completeness of available knowledge.
One example of these approaches is Map of Speculative Fiction, an interactive map-based visualization of approximately 100,000 articles from the Polish and English editions of Wikipedia. The project enables users to explore a wide range of topics related to fantasy and science fiction, including literature, films, television series, games, comics, anime, fictional characters and creators.
To learn more about the topic and key ideas behind the proposed talk, watch the competition video:
The talk selected for the Pyrkon 2027 Science Zone program will be determined by a public online vote. Voting is open until November 7, 2026, at 11:59 p.m. (CET).
Further details about the competition and the opportunity to vote are available on the official Pyrkon website.
